Moral Philosophy from the Godfather of Rendition

David Luban

Die Zeit: Did you not have doubts concerning the use of torture in these countries?
Michael Scheuer: No, my job was to protect American citizens by
arresting members of Al-Qaida....90% of this operation was successful and only 10% could be considered as disastrous.
Die Zeit: Which part was the disaster?
Michael Scheuer: The fact that everything was made public.

– made public, he adds, in part because of "this troublemaker in the Senate, John McCain."

Scheuer was in top form on the same themes two weeks ago, when he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about extraordinary rendition, complaining bitterly that

the Washington Post’s correspondent Dana Priest revealed information that damaged U.S. national security and, as result, won a journalism prize for abetting America’s enemies, and when such lamentable politicians as Senators McCain, Rockefeller, Graham, and Levin followed Ms. Priest’s lead and began to attack the men and women of CIA who had risked their lives to protect America under the direct orders of two U.S. presidents and with the full knowledge of the intelligence committees of the United States Congress. Both Ms. Priest and the gentlemen just mentioned have behaved disgracefully, and ought to publicly apologize to the CIA’s men and women who have executed the Rendition Program.

(Small puzzle: Scheuer did not explain how those who executed the Rendition Program risked their lives under Clinton if, as Scheuer insisted in his 2005 interview, "the CIA did not arrest or imprison anybody themselves" because "the local police or the local secret services took care of that.") As for the people rendered, he adds:

I would not, however, be surprised if their treatment was not up to U.S. standards, but this is a matter of no concern as the Rendition Program's goal was to protect America and the rendered fighters delivered to Middle Eastern governments are now either dead or in places from which they cannot harm America. Mission accomplished, as the saying goes.

(Mission accomplished indeed, and that's why we're so much safer now. Two days ago, the Washington Post reported that "the number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week." State then decided to make the information public, indicating a fourfold increase in terrorist incidents. The report is here. More of that darn bad publicity.)

In today’s Washington Post, Scheuer explains a bit more about his moral philosophy as compared with the old softie, George Tenet, who Scheuer evidently loathes:

I did not – and do not – care about collateral casualties in such situations, as most of the nearby civilians would be the families that Bin Laden’s men had brought to a war zone. But Tenet did care. "You can’t kill everyone," he would say. That’s an admirable humanitarian concern in the abstract, but it does nothing to protect the United States. Indeed, thousands of American families would not be mourning today had there been more ferocity and less sentimentality among the Clinton team.

Almost every word of Scheuer’s moral code deserves thought.

1. "I did not – and do not – care about collateral casualties in such situations..." In one way, Scheuer's boast mirrors the international law of armed conflict, which indeed permits "incidental loss of life...to civilians" unless it is disproportional to the "concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated." That’s the doctrine of proportionality, one of the cornerstones of the law of war. (Note: The quoted phrases come from two treaties the U.S. isn’t party to – Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the ICC. But the U.S. military fully accepts the doctrine of proportionality as binding law of war. And the U.S. military also accepts another aspect of the law of war, the duty of care to avoid collateral damage, which Scheuer clearly has no use for.) There is, of course, the question about whether there was a war going on during the Clinton Administration – the current administration says yes, the war against Al Qaeda has been going on since 1997, even if we didn’t know it until 9/11; while some human rights groups deny that it’s ever been a war, pointing out that to call it a war simply validates the martial fantasies of murderers like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. But assume for the sake of argument that it was a war back then. Scheuer still doesn’t mention the proportionality restriction, and it soon becomes clear why: he doesn’t believe in it.

2. "...as most of the nearby civilians would be the families that Bin Laden’s men had brought to a war zone." This, not such niceties as proportionality, is the stated reason Scheuer doesn’t care about collateral casualties: the innocent victims are the children and wives of jihadists.

Of course, many people think that visiting the sins of the father unto the children is a bit too medieval and collectivist to be morally sound. (The provision in our own Constitution that forbids punishment by "corruption of blood" – disinheriting the children of traitors – is a good example of the kind of individualist moral scruples that seem to have passed Scheuer by.) Innocents don’t lose their innocence because their fathers or husbands are jihadists. They are no less innocent than Scheuer’s own family, and he should be just as willing to blow up anyone’s family (including his own) if it nails Bin Laden. Maybe he is. But it sounds more like Scheuer thinks the reason that "nearby civilians" don't count is that they have the wrong relatives. To be fair: his reference to "a war zone" might be shorthand for the argument that under the law of war fighters can't use civilians to immunize themselves from attack, which is true. But then why bring up whose relatives the civilians were?

3. "‘You can’t kill everyone,’ he [Tenet] would say. That’s an admirable humanitarian concern in the abstract, but it does nothing to protect the United States." -- So I guess that means you can kill everyone. It's good to know. Or rather, you can kill everyone unless traitors like Dana Priest and John McCain publicize it. Then it causes the only kind of collateral damage Scheuer cares about, political fallout.

4. "Indeed, thousands of American families would not be mourning today had there been more ferocity and less sentimentality among the Clinton team." That’s supposing that if Bin Laden had been killed, 9/11 would never have happened. Maybe that’s right. But in truth, Scheuer's view sounds simplistic. The last six years have shown that Al Qaeda leaders are as replaceable as drug kingpins. It was KSM, not Bin Laden, who planned 9/11. A year ago, U.S. forces in Iraq killed Zarqawi, the barbaric leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It did not slow down the pace of violence one bit. Iraq’s bloody reality should have dispelled any illusion that killing the leader kills the terrorist organization. Scheuer's invocation of the 9/11 victims is a cheap shot, combining ferocity and sentimentality. (One afterthought: reading Scheuer's paragraph carefully, it appears that what he is referring to as "sentimentality" is Tenet's tenet "You can't kill everyone." So much for that pesky old "sentimental" Sixth Commandment.)

Scheuer wants to sound like a hard-nosed realist smacking down starry-eyed humanitarians. He's more like a starry-eyed realist.